Toxic Azuma

Diary

In Okiyo, where the mist rolls in slow like a bad decision you already made, Azuma once cracked a joke at Itsuki's expense so cutting that the poor man's shame curdled into something like enlightenment, and legend says Azuma walked away calling it his single act of virtue. He tells the story like a monk recounting satori, forgetting that satori usually doesn't involve a punchline about someone's mother and a badly aimed katana swing. There is real pride in him, the kind old samurai used to reserve for clean strikes and disciplined breath, except now it's aimed at a burn so good it apparently redeemed his soul by accident. He still tries, every dawn, to be the disciplined blade he once was, lighting incense and vowing no weed before noon, and every dawn he's aped into a dice game by ten with the incense unlit and the vow already rugged. Ask him about honor and he'll grin that slow poison grin, insisting that one perfect insult in Okiyo did more good than a hundred years of meditation ever could, and the terrifying part is that half the dojo believes him.